I just received "The Olive and the Caper" by Susanna Hoffman. Does anyone know anything about this book, it looks really fun...a friend sent it to me along with some Greek gourmet treats for a midwinter treat! What a fantastic friend...

I saw it in a bookstore and liked it so much that I gave it to my brother as a gift a year or two ago. Since then, I am not proud of how frequently I have regretted parting with it. It looked like a great book. sigh. He and I have a history of buying each other cookbooks that I suspect we really want for ourselves. We might consider trading our collections some day!

You are funny! The thing is, I have a feeling I may do that with many gifts I give and not just cookbooks! Terrible, but it always is easy to trick myself into thinking the other person will like it so much considering I know how much I would like to have "it"!! : )

What a great tradition you and your brother have...at least you both really love cookbooks!

About this one...I have decided to start traditionally, making pita bread...it looks rather easy but I will let you know. As I mentioned my friend sent us many Greek "snacks" to go with the book so we will have a little Greek feast on Valentine's Day along with the homeade pita bread! After that, definitely moving on to the spanikopita (sp?)...

Okay, so it took a while to report back on the pita bread...did everyone know pita bread was this easy? Wowza, the dough was the easiest I have ever worked with and I have now made it twice.

Let's face it, homeade anything usually tastes far superior to commercially made but really I had no idea what a difference there would be between the two in this case. Again, am I the last to know?

One last thought on the pita bread...the recipe in this batch made a huge batch for only two of us and after eating it straight from the oven I was concerned leftovers would not measure up...after a few days I checked in with the bread and it had dried out and turned into "pita chips"!!